2000 ACM SIGGRAPH Awards

Outstanding Service Award

Tom DeFanti and Copper Giloth are each a recipient
of this year's SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award. DeFanti has
been an inspirational executive committee member and conference contributor,
helping create many of the organizational
activities and conference venues that we now take for granted.
Giloth's dedication to her vocation, computer art, and to SIGGRAPH,
enabled her to launch the conference's first Art Show
and grow it into an internationally acclaimed annual event.
While DeFanti and Giloth are being honored separately,
we acknowledge that they are also contemporaries. With enthusiasm
and hard work, they supported and inspired one another over the years,
and contributed to SIGGRAPH's international stature.
We appreciate this opportunity to publicly thank them
for their outstanding service to SIGGRAPH.

Thomas A. DeFanti

Copper Frances Giloth

When asked what SIGGRAPH activities he was most
proud of, DeFanti responded, in no particular order:

The growth of SIGGRAPH conferences

The quality of A/V at SIGGRAPH conferences

The inclusion of women and artists

The international stature of SIGGRAPH

The SIGGRAPH Video Review

The popularization of scientific visualization

The proliferation of projection-based virtual reality

Lifelong friendships

From SIGGRAPH's first conference in 1974, DeFanti
championed video as a communications medium for science
and art, started the annual Film and Video Show
(which subsequently became the Electronic Theater and is
now the Computer Animation Festival), helped architect
the conference's outstanding audio/visual environment,
and was founder (and still is editor-in-chief) of the SIGGRAPH
Video Review (SVR).

He served on the SIGGRAPH Executive Committee for
12 years. During his four-year tenure as Chair, DeFanti
provided leadership as the organization and conference
blossomed in quality and attendance. DeFanti built a sand
box and invited his scientific, engineering and art friends
to play, providing encouragement and seed money for
new, special projects. He elevated SIGGRAPH to international
stature by cooperating with computer graphics organizations
in Europe and Japan. In 1987 he co-edited the
landmark Visualization in Scientific Computing publication.

For SIGGRAPH 92, he co-created and introduced
the projection-based CAVE(tm) automatic virtual environment
to hordes of screaming fans. Most of all, DeFanti
continues to inspire others, particularly the students of the
Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, feeding new ideas and energy into the
life blood that is SIGGRAPH.

DeFanti has a BA from Queens College and a PhD from
The Ohio State University. He is co-director of the
Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of
Illinois at Chicago.

When asked what SIGGRAPH activities she was most
proud of, Giloth pointed to the design and implementation
of the first SIGGRAPH 82 and 83 juried art shows and
traveling art shows. Prior to 1982, there had been a few
computer art exhibitions, some of international renown,
but none that would match the size and scope of the
shows that SIGGRAPH eventually launched. Art works
from SIGGRAPH 83 traveled to France, Italy, Canada,
Japan, and the US. The art show became more than a
showcase for artists; it changed corporate culture. It showcased
artists who could use technology, and use it in novel
and unique ways that made them a vital force in the computer
graphics industry.

Giloth contributed to the SIGGRAPH organization and
conference in additional ways, volunteering for several
years as a member of the A/V team and helping produce
the SIGGRAPH Video Review (SVR). For several years
she applied her conference A/V and organizational skills
to SIGGRAPH's sister organization, SIGCHI, helping
them achieve the same high standards people came to
expect at SIGGRAPH's annual conference. She applied
her knowledge of the SVR to co-produce the Interactive
Index of all the SVR issues. Giloth also served as the
organization's Special Projects chair for three years, evaluating
proposals and providing seed money for worth-while
projects. And, for 10 years she was the Cover Editor
of the SIGGRAPH newsletter, and worked with artists to
select images that would reproduce well in black-and-white.
Most of all, however, Giloth has been the Grande
Dame of the art show, formally and informally helping to
ensure its continued success over the years.

As with all volunteers, Giloth has found the time to be a
participant as well as an organizer, and exhibited art, published
videos in the SVR, and was a member of the winning
team of the SIGGRAPH 94 College Bowl.

Giloth has a BFA from Boston University and an MFA in
electronic visualization from the University of Illinois at
Chicago. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art
and the Director of Academic Computing at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst.